Nuclear review shows bipartisanship

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We believe that the substantial edge the U.S. has developed in conventional military capabilities, which the NPR notes, permits this country to sharply reduce reliance on nuclear weapons. But we caution those who make light of this major U.S. strategic advantage and its implications.

We support the NPR’s call for the U.S. not to develop new nuclear weapons now. Our report similarly called for a case-by-case approach to extending the life of today’s warheads. And we agree that the focus should be on safety, security and reliability — not developing new military capabilities.

The NPR echoes our call to negotiate a worldwide end to the production of new fissile materials — the key ingredients of nuclear weapons.

Our final report strongly endorsed the U.S. deterrence policy to cover our allies and partners with the U.S. nuclear umbrella — an objective the NPR also embraces.

The report suggested deploying proven missile defenses against threats such as North Korea and Iran but emphasized, as the NPR does, that these defenses should not be so big as to encourage Russia to add warheads to counter them, which would only undermine efforts to reduce nuclear weapons. We included China as well as Russia in this.

But in two areas, we believe the NPR might have fallen short of the mark.

First, we understand that the review considered declassifying additional information about the size and composition of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. It should have done so. This would demonstrate U.S. leadership on the transparency that is needed to secure nuclear materials globally and to bolster strategic stability with Russia and China.

Second, the NPR called for the consideration of conventional “prompt global strike” capabilities. But it did not explain whether these systems would have a niche role against small regional powers such as North Korea or be an ultimate substitute for nuclear weapons in deterrence with Russia and China.

We feel the former is the only sensible approach. Keeping this issue ill-defined creates needless anxiety in Moscow and Beijing that could lead to future problems.

Even with these two caveats, the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review makes important strides in charting a sustainable bipartisan path forward for the United States.

Healthy disagreement over some NPR specifics should not obscure the valuable contribution it makes to advancing U.S. security interests — resting, as it does in part, on our bipartisan 2009 Strategic Posture Commission report.

William J. Perry served as secretary of defense in the Clinton administration. He was chairman of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. James R. Schlesinger was the nation’s first energy secretary and served as secretary of defense from July 1973 to November 1975. He was vice chairman of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States.

The Goon is only showing his incompetence. He has no idea how to build jobs so he comes up with a moronic disattraction. Only the lame and the dumb can pretend there is any value in this waste of time.

kinda funny in a sense, the GOP supporters think they can make hey harpping on the jobs issue as their fall back position. my question is; what have has the GOP offered as an alternative jobs creation bill? we've heard plenty over the past 14 months how dems have blocked & prevented the GOP from doing this and that. well, those BS arguments have now failed since the house GOP caucuses introduction of an alternative HCR bill, scored by CBO, last november. representitive pual ryan has introduced his alternative budget bill in additition to touting his "version" of HCR scored by CBO.

the question is now, what does the GOP have to offer, legislatively, as an alternative that would create jobs quicker than anything proposed by the WH or congressional dems?

Perry and Schlesinger minimize the significance of the PR decision to build - for the first time in over 50 years, a new plutonium processing facility at Los Alamos and a new facility for producing highly enriched uranium at Oak Ridge. Much of the arms control community had wished that US would not see a need for a new generation of nuclear weapons production facilities at a time that we are trying to stop the production of highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium in the rest of the world.

Whatever the Obama intentions are ... if new weapons production facilities are built the danger will exist that tens of thousands of nuclear weapons will be produced in the US over the next 70 years. Once built the weapons production facilities will not be shut down. There has been a deliberate blurring of what constitutes a "new" nuclear weapon. And the failure to show clearly, from the floorspace of the building plans, what the maximum pit and secondary production capacity will be, is deception of grave long-term consequence.

Perry and Schlesinger minimize the significance of the PR decision to build - for the first time in over 50 years, a new plutonium processing facility at Los Alamos and a new facility for producing highly enriched uranium at Oak Ridge. Much of the arms control community had wished that US would not see a need for a new generation of nuclear weapons production facilities at a time that we are trying to stop the production of highly enriched uranium and weapons-grade plutonium in the rest of the world.

Whatever the Obama intentions are ... if new weapons production facilities are built the danger will exist that tens of thousands of nuclear weapons will be produced in the US over the next 70 years. Once built the weapons production facilities will not be shut down. There has been a deliberate blurring of what constitutes a "new" nuclear weapon. And the failure to show clearly, from the floorspace of the building plans, what the maximum pit and secondary production capacity will be, is deception of grave long-term consequence.

If the US were to be subject to IAEA considerations the distinction between research and nuclear weapons production capacity would be considered very important -- as important as the US concern about Iran.

Bi partisan Baloney this is a foreign policy disgrace and dangerous to boot. The incompetent president runs his little seminars and accomplishes NOTHING. Neville Chamberlain still thought he did the right thing too even after the destruction reigned down on England and the rest of the world by the Nazis.

Well, it looks like there is no one reading Politico today who has read the Nuclear Posture Review or has been following the importance of US nuclear weapons policy.

IMHO we should get US and NATO nuclear weapons out of Turkey as soon as possible. We should have a priority on accounting for and dismantling all portable "tactical" nuclear weapons and all cruise missile nuclear weapons.

We should recognize Israel and India as two responsible nuclear weapons states whose democracies refrained from testing nuclear weapons for decades, did not proliferate nuclear weapons technology, and have not been making nuclear weapons threats. India and Israel should be admitted to the NPT as nuclear weapons states and given UN Security Council seats. Pakistan and North Korea, the worst nuclear weapons proliferators, should not be permitted to join NPT as nuclear weapons states.

Congress should delay building a new plutonium facility at Los Alamos and delay building a new highly-enriched uranium facility at Oak Ridge. Let the American people vote directly on whether we want to build a new generation of nuclear weapons. We should not build the capacity to create thousands of new nuclear weapons indefinitely for decades into the future while supposedly pursuing the end of genocidal weapons as an instrument of policy. Nuclear weapons are genocide in a can.